Glutamine is the most abundant plasma amino acid and is involved in many growth promoting pathways. In particular, glutamine is involved in oxidation in the TCA cycle and in maintaining cell redox equilibrium, and also provides nitrogen for nucleotide and amino acid synthesis (Curi et al., Front. Biosci. 2007, 12, 344-57; DeBerardinis and Cheng, Oncogene 2010, 313-324, each of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety). Many cancer cells rely on glutamine metabolism as a consequence of metabolic changes in the cell, including the Warburg effect where glycolytic pyruvate is converted to lactic acid rather than being used to create acetyl CoA (Koppenol et al., Nature Reviews 2011, 11, 325-337, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety). As a consequence of this reliance on glutamine metabolism, such cancer cells are sensitive to changes in exogenous glutamine levels. Furthermore, existing evidence suggests that glutaminolysis plays a key role in certain cancer types (Hensley et al., J. Clin. Invest. 2013, 123, 3678-3684, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety), and is associated with known oncogenic drivers such as Myc (Dang, Cancer Res. 2010, 70, 859-863, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety).
The first step of glutamine catabolism to glutamate is catalysed by glutaminase, which exists as two isoforms, GLS1 and GLS2, originally identified as being expressed in the kidney and liver, respectively. Kidney glutaminase (GLS1) is known to be more ubiquitously expressed than liver glutaminase (GLS2), and has 2 splice variants, KGA and the shorter GAC isoform, both of which are located in the mitochondria. (Elgadi et al., Physiol. Genomics 1999, 1, 51-62; Cassago et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2012, 109, 1092-1097, each of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety). GLS1 expression is associated with tumour growth and malignancy in a number of disease types (Wang et al., Cancer Cell 2010, 18, 207-219; van der Heuval et al., Cancer Bio. Ther. 2012, 13, 1185-1194, each of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety). Inhibitors of GLS1 are therefore expected to be useful in the treatment of cancer, as monotherapy or in combination with other anti-cancer agents.